Dr. Yo wrote:Looks like it's coming along nicely - always good to see Traveller getting some respect.

It's always been my favourite SciFi game - mostly due to how many ways the game can be played. There're always the "bang you're dead" players, but I knew one guy who was so into accounting that the games he ran were good training for starting and running one's own business. It was a completely different gaming experience, for sure.

This is an "edit-insert" - the following pictures were posted in their own post, but ... Somehow, when that post was deleted when I posted Pics 22- 27 on Friday, 30 June. Now, all the pictures posted here have become redundant - as I explain in my next post, I've gone in yet a different direction. These pictures are posted for general interest, and in hopes that some will find them useful inspiration.

New direction, part duh. I realized that I'd kinda lost the focus of the build, but I think I'm back to facing front again. The Fae Mk I is the troop-ship, with the Fae Mk II being the gun-ship of the pair - I kinda lost sight of that. So back into the parts bin with the fans, and on with figuring out how to attach weapons to this thing.

I'm not sure what happened. I somehow lost the post with the Fae Mk II pictures #15-21 ... Since they're of a now-abandoned direction, no problem, really - just perplexing. Moderators, if you can find that post I'd kinda like to have it up here again. If you can't find it, no worries, I guess, other than I somehow lost an entire post.

I realized that with the ventral turret in place, the Phaeton will need landing legs with which to sit upon my display shelf - so legs we must devise.
This is a first attempt. Depending on how these turn out, there may be more.
The spoons will be 'hinged' to the body at the handle end. The hollow spoon handles present some intriguing possibilities for tubing, greeblies, and gubbins of all sorts.
The otoscope cones will serve as the oleos that extend/retract the legs. The plastic tubing is a press-fit, but needed to be positively glued/located for strength - the plastic hex bases serve that need. (Though nowhere near as heavy as a resin model, the Phaeton is no light-weight.)

More landing legs and a wee bit on the cargo doors.Pic 63
PFT Phaéton 063 I'm afraid the landing gear pattern is a bit narrow ... oh, well. I didn't really fit anywhere else. Besides, who needs landing gear when at the High Port? (For those of you unfamiliar with the 'Traveller' game, every planet has at least one High Port. These are geo-synchronous satellites which serve as reception areas for incoming cargo and persons - a quarantine area designed to keep inimical and dangerous stuff off the planet, somewhat like an international airport with no curb-side, only feeder-liners. All cargo/persons desiring to go to the planet proper are required to transfer to a local-shuttle. )

I was really hoping to have something to show for this weekend. However, there are other things happening.

My dear friend SiaoMouse is back in the hospital for the fourth time with a recurrent brain tumour that affects his optic nerve, among other things. His girlfriend, Nikita - also a dear friend - is out of her mind with worry and loneliness, and I don't know what to say to her anymore. She is very down and feels very alone.

Then my lady wife decided this was The Weekend to strip out the basement carpet and ceiling tiles, repaint the faux pine paneling, and have that yard sale she's been on about for three years now. That was yesterday. As part of that, my P-76 Double Lightning was a casualty of a falling ceiling tile. The damage is not repairable, as many of the snapped-off undercarriage parts have vanished. I'm working on changing it to an "in-flight" model. <sigh> I know, I know - compared to SiaoMouse & Niki's situation, a broken model is very small potatoes, but please understand - the work on that small potato spanned 8 years; a lot to just dismiss as "a broken toy."

Today it has been raining - drizzling, really, off and on all day, so no yard sale - everything is under tarps, in hopes of the promised (Hah!) better weather tomorrow. Inside it was more of the painting - touching up the walls, and then sealing the concrete floor, preparatory to putting in some kind of faux-wood flooring over the puce-coloured sealant. I did get some putty laid on today, so not all was lost, but I'm not posting pics of putty.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will fulfill the promise of this weekend. Prolly more sanding to get the putty down to grade, so to speak.

My dear friend SiaoMouse is back in the hospital for the fourth time with a recurrent brain tumour that affects his optic nerve, among other things. His girlfriend, Nikita - also a dear friend - is out of her mind with worry and loneliness, and I don't know what to say to her anymore. She is very down and feels very alone.

Oh dear. Here's wishing them endurance and healing.

"There are a thousand things that can happen when you go light a rocket engine, and only one of them is good."
Tom Mueller of SpaceX, in Air and Space, Jan. 2011

Last weekend I got no work done due to attending a wedding in Newfield, NY just outside Ithaca. We stayed at a great B&B - Enfield Manor - less than a mile from the venue, the Treman Centre - an old barn converted to a party venue with a honeymoon/wedding night suite in the former hay loft. I must say, the conversion job was well done without being either overly slick or "aw-shucks country". But! The 8 hour drive home left me exhausted on Sunday night, with barely the energy to shower before crawling into bed so's to be up at 0430 for my job.

However, I did get some things done after work this week, and I have those pictures.

I've been at a loss as to a "good" paint scheme. Grays have been done and done to death; yet I want something not-gaudy, something business-like, because Traveler is all about the business of running one's own starship (at least, the way I play it). So one wants a memorable paint combo, one that is respectable and not teeth-grittingly terrible. Keeping in mind, too, that the worlds of Traveler are, if not actually infested with pirates and privateers and opportunists of all stripes, at the least they are not as rare as an honest Trader would like.
So. No glaring colours, nothing reflective. However, a bit of prideful display is wanted, else one's potential customers might think one not capable of defending their entrusted cargoes.

Now that the main painting is complete, smaller, detail pieces - like the main battery - can be emplaced. (The turrets, though capable in their own right, are only 2cm powerguns (idea shamelessly stolen from Mr. Drake's Hammer's Slammers.)

The main battery tubes are fixed, forward firing multi-munition tubes of 9" diameter.